


United in Death

by EvilDime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Character death is not permanent, Coffee Shops, Crossover, Fun, Identity Reveal, Light Angst, M/M, Master of Death (Harry Potter), Mild Language, Misunderstandings, Parody, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29242341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilDime/pseuds/EvilDime
Summary: Two dark-haired, tired men meet in a Starbucks... Turns out they have quite a few things in common. Then again, maybe not as many as they initially think.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Harry Potter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 134





	United in Death

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I've been seeing parallels everywhere again. Happens nearly every time I put a toe into another fandom. In this case, I've been sick for a solid ten days, the screen was no longer my friend and I spent the time happily chewing my way through the Heroes of Olympus. Then this happened. Note that the timelines have been bent slightly to match. Have fun! : )
> 
> ...A big Thank You to Susnake for some valuable feedback on this fic!

The man sitting at a window table looking out at the traffic on 9th appeared to be in his mid-twenties, though it was hard to tell: His face underneath the ruffled black hair looked younger, but when he glanced up at a pigeon landing on the changing traffic lights, his eyes were too old for that young face.

Both pale, slender hands were wrapped around a venti hot chocolate, the sides of the impressively big cup displaying the remains of what looked to be chocolate curls sticking to a last few patches of whipped cream. The cup was half empty, the hot chocolate inside still giving off little wisps of steam.

There was nothing remarkable about the young man. He was neither very tall nor particularly short, maybe a little on the thin side but not starving, and dressed in utterly forgettable blue jeans and a dark green sweater. Some might have frowned at the fact that he was wearing long sleeves and clutching at his hot chocolate as though to ward off the cold when it was a balmy 75 degrees outside. But the store was air-conditioned and the long sleeves made sense if one intended to stay long.

The man didn't intend to stay long. In fact, he was half-way to rising from his seat to seek out the warmer climes outside when a voice from his left startled him into sitting back down.

"Is this seat free?"

A young man, maybe in his mid-twenties or so, with dark hair and largely unremarkable dark clothes – though he did give off a bit of a gothic vibe – stood next to the table with a venti cup of something hot and steamy hidden underneath a layer of chocolate sprinkles and whipped cream.

The man seated at the table couldn't help but smile briefly at the sight. "Be my guest."

"Thanks." The man sat down.

Interrupted in his attempt to leave by unexpected company, the first man appeared to feel awkward about getting up to leave now; he turned back to his hot chocolate and took a long sip, curling both hands more firmly around the cup. Next to him, the second man did likewise.

Both sighed, their voices united in displaying much more melancholy than should ever be associated with steaming hot chocolate.

"Drugs no longer working?" The first man remarked with a nod toward the other man's hot chocolate.

"Hot chocolate is supposed to warm you up. It's the ultimate fail-safe. But I still feel cold."

"Tell me about it."

Glumly, they continued sipping their dysfunctional hot drinks in shared misery.

"Wanna come stand outside in the sun with me?" one man asked, apparently surprising himself as much as his companion.

"Yes, actually," the other man replied, immediately joining action to thought and rising from his seat.

Standing outside was more easily said than done, the sidewalks bustling with life at this time of day. All the out-of-the-way spots were lined with shadows, which both men eyed with distaste. By unspoken agreement, they headed toward the river side by side.

"You been in the States long?"

A justified question for a man with such a strong British accent who strolled into Hell's Kitchen like he owned the place.

"Couple of weeks," the man replied. "Are you from around here?"

"Kind of," the man with the skull-themed shirt and jewelry replied. "My family's from Italy, originally, but we moved here…" He faltered, then vaguely continued: "...a long time ago."

"Miss the old country?"

A shudder went through the man, followed by a few long, steadying breaths. "Not so much."

"Bad memories?" When no reply was forthcoming, he answered his own question: "Me too."

"But you grew up in Europe? In England?"

"Yes, why?"

"There's no… You'd have been alone against hordes of… Unless…" Brown eyes shot up from the plaster to meet the other man's. "You're no half-blood, are you?"

That, surprisingly, startled a bitter laugh out of the man. "Believe me, I am! ...Well, on my mother's side, anyway."

"Your mother's?!" What little healthy color his face started out with fled completely.

Curious, the other man stopped and took another sip of his hot chocolate to cover his frown. "Well, she's the one whose parents... Wait. You got a problem with my lineage?" he asked, mildly aggressive.

"Ah. No." The dark-clad man seemed relieved, murmuring something like "Legacy, then," under his breath. "I'm a half-blood myself," he confided. "Direct descendant."

"I see. Is it as bad over here as in England, then? I thought the States were supposed to offer better opportunities to our kind."

"They do!" The other man was quick to reassure him. "It's a lot less dangerous over here, you'll only get attacked for your blood like once a month rather than every damn step of the way."

His companion laughed like at a shared joke.  "Sounds heavenly!"

Frowning, the American took a sip of his own hot chocolate as they waited for the traffic lights to turn. "I admit that the war struck us just as heavily over here as it hit the Ancient Lands, but since then, it's been nearly peaceful over here."

The first man nearly dropped his cup. "The war spread all the way over here?!"

"Yeah, man. We were fighting for our lives for a bit, there."

Groaning, the man closed his eyes. "I hate it when they tell me that only my sacrifice can bring the enemy down, and then it turns out that half the world was fighting the same fight and I just didn't know it."

Snorting, his new friend agreed. "Prophecies are the worst, man. I have yet to find one that actually makes my life better."

Some New Yorkers cursed at the two men idling in front of the green light, blocking the sidewalk. Neither of the two took much notice. Green eyes bored into brown. "What, you too?"

"Spent a week slowly suffocating inside a bronze jar once thanks to some nonsense about _Twins snuffing out the angel's breath."_ He shuddered and hugged his cup of hot chocolate closer. 

"Fuuuck," his companion agreed. "Angel, though?"

"That's my name." He grimaced, holding out one cold hand to shake an equally cold one  raised in response. "Nico di Angelo, pleased to meet you."

"Harry Potter," the other replied.

Nico laughed. "Hades, even your name sounds British!"

"You… don't recognize my name?" Harry asked, cautiously.

Nico's laughter stopped. "No. Should I?"

A smile flashed briefly on Harry's face. "No. I actually prefer that you don't. I'm surprised, though. If the war spread all the way across the pond, I'd have thought you heard about the major players on our end."

"I have," Nico protested, frowning again. Glancing at the traffic light, he saw it currently flashing green and resumed their walk. Harry  fell in beside him.  "You're saying you were a major player in the last war and I never even heard of you."

"I'd say I was, yes." There was something so forlorn and so very far from boasting in Harry's tone that Nico couldn't help but believe him.

"The gods always play such convoluted games," Nico grumbled. "Plots within plots. When the Romans think they've single-handedly saved the world, the Greeks are celebrating their sole victory over the darkness. And that's not even taking Hunters and Amazons into account. Now you're telling me there's another major  faction that we've never even heard of? Hera, what gives?!"

Harry's steps were slowing down as he was looking at Nico askance, his eyes growing wider as the pale man's tirade continued.  "You know, despite all the shared life experience, I think we might have miscommunicated somewhere along the way."

They were nearly to the river now. Nico took Harry's arm and dragged him across the Greenway, then steered them right toward  Pier 84. Only once they were somewhat clear of the crowds did he reply. A deep swallow of his hot chocolate nearly emptied the cup. Thus fortified, Nico began: "When I entered that Starbucks, I immediately sensed your presence. You don't feel quite like anyone I've ever met, but you have a… an aura... around you that feels very familiar."

Harry threw him a brief, quizzical glance, then began scanning their surroundings for listeners. "Same," he said, the word clipped and uninviting.

"Death," Nico said.

"Death," Harry agreed.  "But you're unlike me. There's only one set of… So how are you connected to death?"

"Hades is my father."

"Is that a euphemism or…?"

"I am a demigod, son of a mortal woman and Hades, God of the Underworld."

Harry found a convenient park bench and dropped into it like a log. "Oh. Huh.  You actually mean that. Okay.  That's not quite what I was thinking of when you said 'half-blood'."

"What are you, then?" Nico asked, remaining on his feet and nervously rocking back and forth between his heels and toes. His free hand was stuck in the pocket of his black trousers, which Harry was now eyeing a bit nervously.

"I'm a wizard," Harry said. "Born of a full-blooded wizarding father and a first-generation witch, a so-called muggleborn. Hence, a half-blood; three-quarter, really, but the snobby purebloods don't make that distinction. And I am not supposed to tell any non-wizards about the existence of our kind, but somehow I don't think anyone will try and obliviate the son of the God of the Underworld."

"Wizards," Nico said as though tasting the word. " Magic.  But Hecate doesn't directly deal in death."

"That's… not a usual staple of wizarding kind, no," Harry agreed, a little reluctant. Emptying his hot chocolate, he looked around for a trash can and, finding none, set the empty cup down on the bench next to him.  "I found three wizarding relics, the 'Deathly Hallows', which presumably make me the master of death."

"Master of-" Nico choked on the last sip of his  own hot chocolate and painfully ejected it through the nose. "You have control over Thanatos?!"

Wide-eyed, Harry shook his head so hard his black bangs slapped him in the face. "I don't think so! As far as I know, it just means I'm very hard to kill. As in, I recently died, but then failed to stay dead."

"That… happens," Nico conceded. "Even without special artifacts.  In the course of  the second war,  Thanatos was enchained,  the Doors of Death were  thrown wide open and anyone – well, the monsters at least – could just walk right on through and return to life. A couple of demigods profited, as well.  When exactly did you return from the dead?"

"Summer of… It's been three years, now.  I was seventeen." 

"End of the giant war," Nico said, like this piece of information fit nicely within his world view. "Wait. You're only twenty? You look older."

Harry's face twisted into a dark grimace. "You try fighting for your life since age eleven, see how young and innocent you look."

Nico gulped. "I see your point."

"How old are you, then?  I'd say maybe twenty-four, twenty-five?" Harry cocked his head in question. 

Nico snorted. "I  _very much_ see your point. I'm eighteen."

"Merlin," Harry whispered. "Life has done a number on both of us."

Nico put his empty cup next to Harry's, then sat down at the other end of the bench.  For a while, they just sat looking at the river in contemplative silence. 

Harry finally broke it with a hesitant question. "Are there others like you? Other… demigods?"

"Yes."

He didn't appear keen to say more about the topic, which made Harry all the more curious. "You don't get along?"

"It's complicated."

"Ooooh."

The tips of Nico's ears flushed fiery red. "Not like that."

But Harry was grinning, happy to find a lighter topic to heckle his new friend about than death, prophecy, doom and gloom. "Who is it? Spill!"

Nico shoved at him and averted his gaze, but he didn't get up and leave so Harry wasn't really worried. "Nobody," Nico mumbled.

"Uh-uh!" Harry scolded, wagging a finger at him even though Nico wasn't looking. "Try again, hot-shot."

A blind man in a slightly worn suit walked past them, stopping long enough to say: "It's unfair to tease a man about his unrequited love" and glare at Harry with milky eyes over the rim of his red-tinted glasses. He was gone before Harry could stop gaping.

"The hell was that?" Harry wondered.

"No idea," Nico replied, similarly puzzled, but with a tiny uptick to the corner of his mouth. "New Yorkers, eh?"

Harry laughed awkwardly. "I guess. He's right, though, I suppose. Sorry for bothering you."

"'s alright," Nico sighed. "Just not an easy topic to talk about. See, there's this rallying point for half-bloods, a camp on Long Island. Half-bloods like us are often hunted by all kinds of mythological monsters, but the camp is a kind of safe space. I stayed away for the longest time because I had a crush on one of the older kids there. Cheated myself out of a home because of unrequited love. Dumb, right?"

"No," Harry said softly. "We do many dumb things for love, but I don't think protecting your feelings from getting hurt is dumb. It's just… necessary. - I had a crush, once.  When I was fourteen,"  he suddenly volunteered.

The way he said it immediately rang all manner of warning bells in Nico's head. Still, he asked: "What happened?"

"In love with someone else, of course. Then he died."

_He._

A couple of New Yorkers, maybe around thirty or so, walked past behind them, arguing loudly. 

"...isn't the same."

"The hell you say. It's  _exactly_ the same. Look, if I'd known you were sweet on me back in the forties, do you think I'd have run off chasing skirts all across town?"

"You'd better," the other replied furiously. "If anyone had found out, you'd a lost that job at the shipping yard and then where would we have been? Starving, the both of us.  That's where."

"But still,  going public now would be…"

Their voices got lost in the distance.  Nico had no idea how a couple of millennials came to be discussing gay life in the forties, but it was a nice reminder that things  _had_ changed since he'd been a little boy. Maybe not as much as they  ought to, maybe not as much as he would like, but enough, at least, that he should just buckle up and finally accept who and what he was. It was ridiculous the way he could call his zombie chauffeur without giving it much thought but balked at discussing male crushes with a virtual stranger.

"My  old  crush is still alive," Nico said, "but happily involved with a girl."

"Ouch," was all Harry said and Nico felt like a load had been lifted off his shoulders at the easy acceptance.

A many-headed serpent broke through the surface of the Hudson river. In its wake, a dark-haired man of some twenty-odd years, armed with a gleaming bronze sword, shot out of the waves and began stabbing and hacking away at the beast.

"Speak of the devil," Nico said with a mixture of fond exasperation and glee.

"Are you seeing this?" Harry asked, staring wide-eyed at the battle. He looked right and left, but nobody else seemed to be taking note of the Hydra snapping and snarling not two hundred feet from them. He poked a finger in one eye and Nico flinched at the gesture before realizing that his new friend was merely checking on his contacts.

"Normal folks don't see monsters or heroes," Nico explained. "They probably think it's someone splashing around on water skis or what have you. "

"But why am I seeing this?" Harry asked. "Hydras I know of, but the guy with the sword is a bit unexpected."

"That's Percy," Nico said. He sighed and  let himself slouch lower on his bench. "The idiot I used to be head over heels for." After a brief pause, he added: "Well, not so much an idiot anymore. At the very least, he knows not to cut off the heads.  It's 'the  Hyra', by the way,  not 'Hydras' – there is only one. It just keeps returning from Tartarus."

Harry barely took a  second to digest this news.  "Shouldn't we help him?" Harry asked, already on his feet and nervously fumbling with something that looked like a  cheap  prop for a magic show. 

"Nah," Nico waved him off. "Not our quest. Besides, his  _girlfriend_ will probably be there any minute now to help him."

The minutes  ticked by with the two men watching and the couple on the water fiercely battling it out.  A pained cry echoed across the waves as the monster bit a chunk out of the struggling hero's shoulder.

"Fuck it," Nico eventually snarled and suddenly he was holding a black blade that seemed to ooze darkness. "Let's go."

"I'm not a demigod," Harry objected half-heartedly. "Won't people see me?"

Nico shrugged. "The Hydra's probably a large enough oddity that the mist will cover anything that goes on around it. Including a couple more idiots coming to battle it."

Harry, clearly unaware what 'mist' Nico was speaking of, just said "Alright" – and pulled out a miniature broomstick that suddenly grew to full size. 

"What in the world…?"

"Hop on," Harry invited him, swinging one leg over the handle  like a boy with a stick horse.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Do you have a better way of traveling over there?" Harry asked. Smirking, the asshole.

Nico wordlessly climbed on behind Harry, then squawked and wrapped his arms tightly around the other man as the broomstick took off.

Once they got to the scene of the battle, Harry's head was nearly taken off by waterboy's sword and he swerved to the right in a brutal, fast turn. Nico yelped as he  missed  falling off  by a hair. "Percy, hold your damn horses! We come in peace."

"Nico?! Man, I'm glad to see you. I don't know what idiot has been playing whack-a-mole with this thing, but it's got _fifteen_ heads!"

"Probably someone from Ares cabin," Nico replied, eliciting an amused snort.  "Annabeth not backing you up today?"

"Nah, she's on a quest to save the world. In  Kansas."

"Kansas?!"

"I know, right?"

Even as he traded banter with Percy,  Nico's  black sword was busy keeping several heads of the  Hydra occupied. 

Harry felt a bit useless, needing to keep both hands on his broom to stay airborne with his passenger stretching and bending every which way. "So, anyone got a plan?" he asked casually.

"Who's your ride?" Percy asked, wiping some blood out of his face. "And Fates have mercy, is that a  _flying broomstick?!"_ He accidentally lobbed off one of the Hydra's heads. "Oops."

"Percy, meet Harry, wizard. Harry, meet Percy, son of Poseidon," Nico calmly introduced as he sliced off the tongue and  knocked out  several teeth  from  one of the  most recent  couple of  Hydra heads.

"Nice to meet you," Harry said absently, then repeated: "Plan?"

"Don't chop off any heads," Percy said briskly,  trying and failing yet again to get past the heads and hit the beast's heart.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Thanks, never would have thought of that."

"Smartmouth," Precy surmised. "Nice, will fit right in. Which cabin?"

"He's not fully part of our world," Nico said. "If he was, though – Hecate, without a doubt."

"Legacy?" Percy asked,  poking at the hydra's eyes and managing to stab out a couple. 

"I think so," Nico said. "Though there seem to be many of his kind?" He ended the sentence in a sort of question, giving Harry a quick glance while leaning past him to stab his sword through the jaws of a head that was trying to eat Harry. 

Harry was getting quite sick of this  designated driver business.  "Thousands in England,  more world-wide," he said, tone clipped. "Hold on tight." Letting go of the broom with both hands, he risked the consequent shuddering of the  Firebolt III  trying to balance two people, one of whom had not brought his frequent  flier card.  Harry retrieved his wand from his wrist holster with a flourish, then set about severing heads in quick procession to twin cries of dismay – and cauterizing them just as fast. 

Seconds later, the fight was over, the Hydra having fled toward the bottom of the river to protect its single remaining head.

"Huh," Percy made where he was treading water. He seemed too light-headed from blood-loss to give chase – or maybe he was just so stunned by Harry's actions. Nico agreed, clutching at Harry a bit more tightly, presumably in an attempt to steal some of his awesome.

A couple of minutes later, the three young men were safely back on land, each of them surprised by the easy victory. Nico helped Percy unpack some first-aid supplies and soon the wounded hero's shoulder was wrapped in gauze and he was ingesting some delicious nectar. Harry took a couple of steps to the left, intent on ferrying their abandoned cocoa cups to the nearest trash can while the demigods played doctor.

Of course, that's when the remaining head of the Hydra suddenly popped back out of the waves and devoured Harry.

Nico blanched. "Harry…!"

Percy took one look at his friend's horrified face and jumped right back into the river to carve Nico's new friend out of the Hydra's belly if that was what it took.

It turned out that yes, that was exactly what it took. It was bloody and slimy and gross, but eventually, Percy returned to the Riverside Park with one trophy  Hydra tooth and one dead wizard in tow –  oddly in one piece, but very definitely dead.  Nico had felt him go. Except...

Except for how he suddenly shuddered and opened his eyes. 

"Harry!!!"

"Those Doors of Death still open?" the waterlogged wizard mumbled.

Nico and Percy looked at each other in panic. "I dearly hope not," Percy ground out between clenched teeth.

"Hallows not just a myth, then," Harry concluded, spitting out something gross that he was very determinedly not thinking about and sitting up.

"Never should have gambled with those three brothers," a deep voice rumbled.

"Thanatos!" Nico gasped.

"Keep this one close, little demigod," Thanatos advised. "He's indeed very hard to kill. Every time his name pops up on my list, some bug deletes it right the next second.  Ever since I took on this duty, I've never had a day of downtime to sit down and fix the coding, and here we are." He shook his tablet in obvious distaste. Looking down at Harry, he growled: "Don't  push it, though, Potter."

"Yessir,"  the wizard mumbled weakly. 

"'Master of Death', huh?" Nico said, amused, once the god had vanished in a plume of black mist. 

"Told you it just meant I live longer."

"So you did," Nico said, reaching down a hand to help Harry stand. "And  Thanatos just confirmed it. Also…" He eyed Harry from below his lashes. "For once, I think he gave me some good advice."

"Whassat?" Harry asked, still disoriented. He was currently trying to blink his contacts back into place and didn't see Percy cracking up at his side.

"I think I'll try and keep this one close," Nico proclaimed smugly.

_~ The End ~_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Don't forget to feed the author. Concrit welcome! : )


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